Scientist - Immunology

BioSpace has been engaged to help our client, a venture backed biotechnology company utilizing a novel spatially encoded screening and optimization platform to develop treatments for historically intractable causes of human disease, bring on a scientist who specializes in immunology. The Company's platform technology provides comprehensive, quantitative affinity binding data at a completely unprecedented scale. Our internal development programs are focused on oncology and immunology. In addition to these programs we also work with leading pharmaceutical companies. Our platform is based on fluorescent imaging of ultra-dense microarrays such that, via thousands to millions of images, we can measure billions of target/molecule interactions in a day, generating hundreds of millions of dose-response binding curves.

Position Summary:

We are seeking a highly motivated, creative, and experienced immunologist to join our biology team. The candidate will play a key role in the evaluation of targets for immune modulation and be responsible for designing and optimizing a wide-range of biochemical and cell-based assays for the evaluation and profiling of hits from our screens and for lead optimization. Hands on experience and in-depth knowledge of standard immunological assays and flow cytometry is required. The position will report to the Head of Biology. The core responsibilities of this job will be

1. Evaluate new targets for inflammation/autoimmunity

2. Independently design and optimize biochemical and cell-based assays specific to therapeutic targets of interest

3. Adapt assays for medium to high-throughput screening of small molecule hits from our affinity screens

4. Design and execute studies to fully characterize the mechanism of action of small molecules

5. Analyze data and communicate results in our project team meetings

6. Work closely with scientists across the company in chemistry, platform, screening and data teams to efficiently move projects forward

7. Help evaluate and set up new lab instrumentation

8. Support organization of lab and equipment as needed

Experience and Qualifications:

Given the company’s size, anticipated growth and fast-paced environment, the organization requires a Scientist who is thoughtful, high energy and can partner with the broader organization to further enhance our next generation drug discovery capabilities. Part of the organization's success is nurtured by a hands-on work environment where everyone is accountable, everyone is vested in a vision of excellence, and everyone actively takes part in the success of the business. We support a positive work environment comprised of engaged employees who feel appreciated, recognized and free to be creative. 

Qualifications include:

· PhD with 5+ years of academic/industry research experience in the field of immunology, immuno-oncology or related scientific field

· Background in small molecule drug discovery preferred

· Extensive hands-on experience in primary cell isolation, differentiation and cell culture required

· Extensive hands-on experience with cell-based assays including flow cytometry, cytokine detection and gene expression analysis required

· Experience with screening small molecules in medium through-put cell-based assays and small molecule mechanism of action studies ideal

· Experience with reporter assays and proliferation/viability/apoptosis assays a plus

· Experience with biochemical assays and molecular biology techniques a plus

· Excellent organizational, interpersonal and communication skills and can thrive in a highly collaborative research environment

· Demonstrated technical proficiency, ability to troubleshoot to solve problems and to deliver high quality data She/he will exhibit the ability to work well under pressure to provide results in a short timeframe.